Who is Ted Kenney?

I know this won't come as a shock to anyone but last night I tuned into Michael Savage for about 5 minutes and he refers to Abdulmutallab as "Abdulblahblah" (yes, just like a child on a playground) and he said that neither Obama nor Napolitano care at all that someone tried to blow up a plane on Christmas day, that they couldn't be bothered during their holiday and were annoyed that anyone called to talk to them about it. Based on what? The paranoid, angry rantings of a deranged individual.

The unemployed are straining community colleges across the country.

My daughter, who is a junior in high school, has been taking courses at the community college to get a jump on what she'll need for college later. She tells me the registration lines are full of people my age.

People my age, btw, are likely to find out at the other end of the retraining process that people my age don't get hired for those jobs after all. Which is exactly what my wife discovered after two years of school and eighty thousand dollars in loans to get a law degree.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), who appears to be stark raving mad, told a conservative talk-radio show yesterday that President Obama has "not kept a single promise to the American people.... All the promises he's kept are the ones that endanger our lives."

this comment by foxx is a treasure to be savored. amazing on so many levels. she's neck and neck with michelle b. for looniest member of congress.

A group of 39 House Republicans hope to crush marriage equality in the nation's capital.

Really?!? Only 39? I'm surprised it's not a MUCH higher number, like 179.(100% of GOPers in the House.) Apparently opposing other people's marriages isn't the cash cow/hot button issue it used to be.

[...] the money will be used to promote five new partnerships intended to help train over 10,000 new math and science teachers over the next five years.

And, once they're trained... What? They're gonna whisper multiplication and Mendeleev tables to themselves while they're waiting for the situation to improve? They won't even be eligible for unemployment, since you have to be employed and laid-off first. Meanwhile, schools are not hiring, but cutting positions, instead.

"The review will pinpoint the various failures of the intelligence community to 'connect the dots'"

Not that it is necessarily true in this case, but I wonder what would happen if there were no "dots to connect" - if the would-be attacker was a lone wacko, with no previous indications of ill-intent on the radar, if the PETN would not have been detectable to x-ray (backscatter-millimeter-wave-whole-body-whatnot)...

IOW, if there was nothing we really could have done, what would politicians say? "Sorry folks, there was nothing we could have done, these things might happen every now and then".

Given that no politician would say that, how much stock should anyone place in official politician's announcements of "security failures"? If there were none, politicians would invent them.

Apparently opposing other people's marriages isn't the cash cow/hot button issue it used to be.

Hope you're right, zoe, but I fear it may have more to do with most being unwilling to cut short their vacations. On the HC bills, the Democratic leadership's threats to make everyone work Thanksgiving and Christmas seemed to light a bigger fire under the GOP than anything else that was said.

Michelle Bachmann's BFF and charter member of Glenn Beck's President Obama is Destroying America Fan Club, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC),IS stark raving mad! A right wingnut of the first degree, where ever Bachmann's face appears, Foxx's weasally face is always within camera range. Foxx is a typical southern Republican, masking racism and ethnic, religious, and social hatemongering behind more palatable government conspiracy theories. To imagine Foxx as a former teacher makes another one cringe. It's impossible to imagine her treating all students fairly.

I don't often get excited about new teaching initiatives, but since I am a math support profesional, I like the news out of DC today.

There is no question that math education needs a shot in the arm.

We treat math like it's a foreign language.

Try, it's a hidden language, for everyone to discover on his or her own terms.

We all have latent math skills. Heck, even birds can count!

I struggle everyday to make math meaningful for a slew of chidren. Some are gifted, others need more scaffolding. Either way, the key is to make math relevant, vibrant, revealed for the hidden language that it is.

Need I say that, without math, there is no science.

"I get the distinct impression that Sean Hannity doesn't know what the word "cold" means."

Sean apparently never heard of the ice age.

at the same time as community colleges are being inundated with the unemployed seeking new skills, financially strapped states are cutting back on their funding. brilliant.

I think the secrecy for the HCR Bill adjustments is a bad thing. It makes Democrats look bad, and like Repubs in avoiding transparency. Why such poor image-sense among the Dem leaders? I don't get it.

Thank you for NOT using the phrasing "Accused Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab" or "Alleged Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn".

Both of these people were caught in the act and neither made any attempt to deny it, any defense would have to be/have been on technical arguments against particular charges or on questions of motive and/or sanity. Despite this, many news sources today have used weasel words and I am glad to see this site not succumbing to the trend.

As for admonishment for Glenn Beck to "get classy", please be realistic. That man is not and never will be part of the civil discourse in this country, nasty is all he knows how to do and it pays to well for him to even try to learn a different way.

People my age, btw, are likely to find out at the other end of the retraining process that people my age don't get hired for those jobs after all. Which is exactly what my wife discovered after two years of school and eighty thousand dollars in loans to get a law degree.
Posted by: Roddy McCorley

i've got a niece who enrolled in a program last year with a few dozen other students -- this year they had a waiting list. all classes are overflowing.

and the next problem will be that all those who graduate next year will be running after the same 4 jobs -- with tens of thousands of dollars of debt added to their load.

"I get the distinct impression that Sean Hannity doesn't know what the word "cold" means."

The energy secretary wants to paint roofs white! Why, God, why must the government interfere with my Creator's divinely given gift of enjoying a black top shingle house absorbing heat so I can test to be sure my Lennox 3000 PowerMaxâ„¢ AC is working properly.

When they first came to take away the sound and fury of my neighbors' combustion engine Humvee, I did nothing because I did not have a Humvee. When they came for my uncle's incandescent light bulb, I did nothing.......

God bless Sean Hannity for standing up to tyrants trying to spoil His creation.

To imagine Foxx as a former teacher makes another one cringe. Posted by Carol A.

Foxx was booted from one state university for being obnoxious and incompetent. Then she got booted from a community college for being obnoxious and incompetent.

Finally she found a career where being obnoxious and incompetent are assets: Republican politician.

Focus. Focus. Focus...

Big time.
And right now.
You want to hold the fort at midterms?
You want to stop the chuckle-headed zombies from retaking control?

Then focus...
Like the world's biggest and brightest laser.

On what you ask?
On seeing the positives...
On writing about the positives...
On praising our president's efforts to make things positive...

Focus like your life depended on it.
As you can see from the comments upthread, the zombies are on the march...
And they are full of hatred for all things Democratic and Barack...

Steve started things out right this week with the article on Hilda Solis's work at Labor:

Garnering less attention, she just finished hiring 250 new investigators to protect workers from being cheated out of wage and overtime pay. She also started a new program that scrutinizes business records to make sure worker injury and illness reports are accurate. And she is proposing new standards to protect workers from industrial dust explosions — an effort the Bush administration had long resisted.

And he doubles down again tonight with My kind of initiative:

President Barack Obama announced Wednesday a $250 million public-private initiative designed to improve national math and science education.

But the positive is all around us if we have but eyes to perceive:

US Seeks to Give All Americans High Speed Internet Access: The U.S. government is spending more than $7 billion to bring high speed Internet access to all Americans. It is a huge infrastructure project and its goal is to make sure every American - including those who live in impoverished urban and rural areas - can take advantage of the World Wide Web.

Is that not HUGELY positive?
Why is it not be trumpeted?
Why is that news not in your local paper?

Focus, focus, focus people.
Don't go negative on Barack and abet the zombies:
Find and focus on the positive.
Read all your news with an eye for the positives.
And then share what you find with us here.
There is no better way to kill zombies.
They hate good news like the Wicked Witch of the West hates water.

Make it pour please...

The energy secretary wants to paint roofs white! -- oh my, @20:26

There might be a future for someone who invents a colour-changing roof: white in summer, black in winter.

"* The Congressional Native American Caucus was not pleased with RNC Chairman Michael Steele's "honest Injun" comment during an appearance on Fox News."

I hate PC. Steele's an idiot but obviously he wasn't trying to denigrate native americans. The proper response is not to get huffy but to sigh and gently or sarcastically chide. Treating a verbal gaffe with no intended malice as a big deal just makes the NAC look like tools.

Ironically, "honest injun" is a tip to the presumptive honesty of the native Americans and isn't a put-down like "indian giver." I would think, the pro/con dimension of ethnic references should at least matter. But Steele's real problem is that he is perhaps too much an honest injun - saying the Republicans made mistakes, maybe don't deserve to rule yet ("never", but relative to his job ...) They need mindless loyalty and intra-optimism to get the marching morons to the polls and bring back the major source of our disasters.

Tom Nicholson - The reason nobody wants to teach math is that nobody likes to learn math, and even other teachers hate math and have no shame about admitting their ignorance or just saying "I'm not good at math." It also isn't much fun to teach for most high school teachers, who get into it "for the kids," and there is a limitted amount of personal interaction you can do during math class... And, finally, if you can teach math or science, you've got a better shot at doing some work that is much more engaging than starting at a bunch of bored faces. But, yeah, employment's a problem.

For all ya older unemployed bastards out there -- y'alla re absolutely right. People need to be aware that once they get out of school, they'll be competing against younger people, plus they'll have college debt. Younger people have an edge simply because they're an open book. Employers see that you have a different background and they automatically picture you in a different field and you're screwed.

I'd recommend finding certifications that might help you break in a bit. Don't go to school for two years expecting to break into a field. There are several respected certifications for computer work that you never have to step inside a class to pass... just some books and some motivation. Will you get the job? Maybe not. But you're guaranteed not to have another 15,000 in undischargable debt.

To Tlaloc: whatever Steele's intent, the phrase is deeply denigrating, both in the use of "injun" rather than "Indian" and in the implication in the origins of the phrase that most Indians were NOT honest. It honestly isn't much better than if someone else were to refer to Steele by the "N-word".

Neil B: see above about the phrase's original implication about the honesty of the typical Native American.

Note: The the question of whether the term Indian or Native American is more appropriate to use and whether lumping all of the tribes together into a signle eth

"To Tlaloc: whatever Steele's intent, the phrase is deeply denigrating"

Apparently you don;t realize those two statements are contradictory: without intent there is no denigration, merely ignorance.

To suggest that what the listener hears matters and what the speaker said doesn't is PC, it's an ugly and stupid philosophy that should be killed, thoroughly and brutally. PC is what leads a group of idiots to complain about a congressman saying the word "niggardly" even though it has no etymological connection to the word "nigger,"

In reality what matters is what the speaker meant, because they're the one speaking. If they mean to insult and belittle then that's one thing. If they're just a michael steel class idiot that's another entirely.

Tell me something, would you? When you're a politician, does that give you some kind of protected status that lets you go far beyond what is normally permitted by freedom of speech and common courtesy?

Why aren't people like Virginia Foxx charged with libel? That's a damaging false statement that the author makes while knowing it to be false. I'm pretty sure if one of your neighbours got up in public and started spouting some crazy shit that you cut the brake lines on his car, and you lost your job as a result or got investigated when there was no foundation to it, you'd be able to get some legal satisfaction. Is there some reason Obama just has to shake his head ruefully and chuckle, when some dingbat starts putting the boots to him?

Just curious. I know if I was Obama, Foxx would be getting a visit from one of those big WWF bitches, and next morning she'd have to stick her spoon up her ass to eat breakfast.

Tlaloc -- I agree with you in principle. But "niggardly" can be used to tweak people's noses as the speaker waves his hand in the air and says, "What? it's from the Old Norse hnoggr, meaning miserly. What's the problem?" Secondly, if some listeners assume the root of niggardly is the french niger, then isn't it reasonable to suspect the speaker might be similarly confused?

"The problem with the urban poor is that they are nigardly towards their educations." What? What?

Apparently Glenn Beck confused Ted Kennedy with Jesse Helms.

to exlibra1:
If, after three or four years, there are still no positions for these trained teachers, things will be so bad in the country, the plight of these teachers will be among the least of our worries. Personally, I'd much rather spend the money on this than on a bunch more fucking bombs.

A group of 39 House Republicans hope to crush marriage equality in the nation's capital.

Though I already know the all-too-depressing answer, you still have to wonder: Is it possible for these sons of bitches to just once -- just once -- do something for the country?

It appears that Goldman Sachs handled the offering of bonds for the State of California to help its budget deficit crisis. As they did this, they advised their biggest investors to bet against the bonds, in other words SHORT the very same California bonds Goldman Sachs helped bring to market for a fee on behalf of the State of California.